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The final “death” toll

Those of you who have been following my lightening hit story might be interested to hear about this. So far the count is:

One inverter—all three circuit boards fried

One back-up generator—control board fried. It has been kind of scary living without back-up power. The weather keeps telling us clear skies but apparently they forgot to add the sentence “but maybe with some clouds in them,” because we have had several cloudy days in there. We finally got full power to the batteries on Tuesday so I immediately did the laundry. David should be able to fix this soon–he finally got the new board today.

Two motion sensor security lights on garage. These may actually be okay, but the wiring that leads to them is fried. We won’t know until David rewires that area of the garage.

One florescent light fixture in garage—same scenario as the security lights…

One communications hub that allowed the inverter, charge controllers and mate to talk—fried circuit boards

The oven—inexplicably as it is nowhere near the garage—control board fried. This fix is not too expensive, but of course, now we are looking at new and better ovens! I had to do something for a fellow staff member’s birthday this week, so I bought a bunch of cake and frosting mix on sale figuring I would make cupcakes for all the kids. As I was driving home, I got to do the classic head slap doubletake–no oven! Duh… So I made a special trip to CostCo Sunday to buy a cake, and I still have enough cake mix to make cupcakes for the whole school if the oven ever gets fixed. Now all I need is a reason…

One solar panel (Thank God only one)—not sure if this was an arc from the main bolt that shattered the glass or the surge coming up the wires from the garage. Anyway, replacing one solar panel turns out to be nearly impossible because you can never find one that matches, so this one has us almost completely stumped. David and his friend, Greg, are thinking of trying to repair the panel just to see if they can, but ultimately we may end up having to replace the entire array.

The mate maybe? Still not sure about that… (The mate is a little device that lets you talk to the charge controllers, inverter, generator, Skipper, movie star, professor and Marianne, millionaire and his wife.)

A few shingles on the garage roof

The dryer still works, but it doesn’t shut off anymore. It finishes its cycle, buzzes to tell you it’s done, then continues to spin and blow cold air until you stop it or (presumably) lightening strikes again and knocks out the power.

So far, the bill to repair all of this is still lower than our deductible, so no, insurance will not cover it. We are looking into installing a lightening rod.